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Customer Loyalty: Behavioral vs. Emotional

Whenever the topic of the most important sales and marketing issues for a business comes up in conversation, customer loyalty is always at or near the top of everyone’s list. It makes sense. After all, how much easier is it to sell your product or service to someone who already knows and trusts your brand?

However, there are two very distinct ways of building loyalty, and each offers certain advantages depending on your business and the nature of your clientele. We are increasingly bombarded with rewards programs from travel companies, retailers, restaurants and the like. Some offer “points” or “miles” that can be redeemed for free merchandise. Others offer special discounts to program members. Regardless of the specific details, these programs are aimed at developing behavioral loyalty; that is, you behave in a certain way in order to receive the promised benefits.

At Jag, our goal – and it is part of our mission statement – has always been to develop long-term relationships based on trust, integrity, value and mutual benefit with our clients. This is referred to as emotional loyalty; harder to define and to achieve, but considered by many to be a more valuable form of customer loyalty. We do not have a “frequent buyer” program or the like, but (we hope, anyway) our customers know that we will do just about anything humanly possible – assuming legal & ethical – to help them with products and/or projects.

We encourage you to evaluate our work and help us to ensure that we are doing everything possible to earn your loyalty. That’s the real currency of business, and we want to be sure that we are earning yours!